Sunday, June 30, 2013

one of the special pieces of my summer this year will be the discovery and recovery of whatever is in what i now know as my back garden. i have rooted around in this part of it and discovered a few odds and ends growing there including a rose bush, a couple of mature hostas,

a young walnut tree, and several perennials.

oh and most visibly, an old bird bath and a sorry falling down trellis which i think has morning glories gone wild somewhat attached to it.

i'm going to cut everything back that needs to be cut back, then weed it out and redefine the beds, bring in soil and mulch and then make some decisons around adding in more plants.

Friday, June 28, 2013

Thursday, June 27, 2013

i'm drawn to the bared soul of this place, all attempts to make pretty what was already pretty but somehow besmirched by time, each layer giving up its own ghost as time peels back what is and was revealing the simple stratification of brick on mortar . . .

let me commune, then, commune with your silence,clear as a light, and pure as a ring.you are like night, calmed, constellated.your silence is star-like, as distant, as true.excerpted from "i like you calm, as if you were absent" by pablo neruda

Monday, June 24, 2013

under the trees light has dropped from the top of the sky,light like a green latticework of branches,shining on every leaf, drifting down like clean white sand.a cicada sends its sawing song high into the empty air.the world is a glass overflowing with water.pablo neruda

Saturday, June 22, 2013

Friday, June 21, 2013

when despair for the world grows in me
and i wake in the night at the least sound
in fear of what my life and my children's lives may be,
i go and lie down where the wood drake
rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds.
i come into the peace of wild things
who do not tax their lives with forethought
of grief. i come into the presence of still water.
and i feel above me the day-blind stars
waiting with their light. for a time
i rest in the grace of the world, and am free.

Sunday, June 16, 2013

i left behind all my friends. my family. many of my toys, my books, many of my clothes, my dog, the only home i'd ever known.

my dad met us at the airport.

he had a huge car.

a pontiac parisienne.

he drove us near downtown toronto.

i was awed.

when he brought us to our new home - a tiny two bedroom apartment in a massive apartment building i was equally awed that we had a fridge, a stove, a bathroom with hot and cold water, and everything was new. it had furniture, a balcony, and i could see the don valley parkway from the bedroom window in a bedroom i shared with my brother.

my dad took a huge risk in going to canada alone the year before.

he took on the possibility that life there would be better.

it had to be. we had next to nothing.

i owe him my life, several times.

all that i have i have through my work.

but the possibility of the many kinds of work i now call my life was given to me through he and my mother's incredible decision to leave behind everything.

thanks mum and dad.

i learned to love my dad completely as i helped teach him how to love completely.

Wednesday, June 12, 2013

let us go then, you and i,
when the evening is spread out against the sky
and indeed there will be time
there will be time, there will be time
time for you and time for me,
and time yet for a hundred indecisions,
and for a hundred visions and revisions . . . .

excerpted, cut and pasted from "the love song of j. alfred prufrock" by t.s. eliot

Monday, June 10, 2013

Sunday, June 9, 2013

springtime radiance, gradually, gradually where does it go?again before a wine jar, we take up a goblet.all day we’ve questioned the flowers, but the flowers do not speak.for whom do they shed their petals and leaves, for whom do they bloom?

Saturday, June 8, 2013

"life is an experimental journey undertaken involuntarily. it is a journey of the spirit through the material world and, since it is the spirit that travels, it is the spirit that is experienced. that is why there exist contemplative souls who have lived more intensely, more widely, more tumultuously than others who have lived their lives purely externally. the end result is what matters."

Thursday, June 6, 2013

here is the deepest secret nobody knows
(here is the root of the root and the bud of the bud
and the sky of the sky of a tree called life;which grows
higher than soul can hope or mind can hide)
and this is the wonder that's keeping the stars apart